Also today, the Digital Entertainment Group held an interesting press event this morning in Hollywood to talk about the latest HDTV and Blu-ray Disc market research. On hand were senior home video execs from all the major Hollywood studios. Among the interesting revelations (and we'll be talking about them a lot more on Monday) were these: We're now a little over 2 years into the growth of the Blu-ray format. At the same point in the early life of DVD, there were 1.2 million DVD players in U.S. homes. Fox's Mike Dunn claimed that there are more than 2.5 million stand-alone Blu-ray players in the U.S. today, with another 8 million PS3s. Price points for both Blu-ray hardware and software are at about the same level as they were at this point for DVD. BD hardware sales were reportedly up 25% in October from the previous year. And Blu-ray software sales are actually AHEAD of the DVD software sales curve, and have been accelerating even in the last two months as the economic slowdown has become more obvious. The DEG says that a year ago, Blu-ray made up about 10% of total sales of new blockbuster titles. Today, that total is 14%, and the industry expects that to increase to between 18-20% in the next year (likely starting with Warner's The Dark Knight). Much of this is being driven by the adoption of HDTVs in the U.S. (which are now installed in 50% of U.S. households). The DEG's research indicates that some 28% of HDTV households in the U.S. currently view Blu-ray movies. No actual hard numbers were given, but according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are roughly 111 million households in the U.S. (as of 2007), so some 55 million of those current have HDTVs. At a 28%, that comes out to about 15 million U.S. households watching Blu-rays, either on stand-alone players or PS3s. That's our own rough calculation based on the estimated percentages the DEG provided. We suspect the actual number is somewhere between 10 and 15 million, which would more closely match up with the estimated number of BD players and PS3s mentioned above - something north of 10.5 million. Regardless, that's still an impressive figure when you consider that the laserdisc market - at its height - amounted to a total of 2 million LD players here in the States. In a little over two years, Blu-ray has ALREADY far surpassed laserdisc and is currently running ahead of the DVD adoption curve. So much for those claims that Blu-ray will remain a niche market.